[BNP/E3, 77 – 76-77]

Agony

Beginning.

X Darkness and storm outside make inward gloom,

X Quiet and home within and useless pain

  Weigh down upon me as a wasted life,

X     Save where from the vile[1] tomb

X Of day there comes a semblance of a strife

  Through the blown varying of the pallid rain.

__________

X (The mansion’s form on thunder-hustings shake)

X A blankly‑smiling day informs our eyne,[2]

X And there is here a ghastness and a gale

       That make |the[3] frail form| quake;

  And strange to me who think all things must quail,

  A voice is raised in joy ­- alas! not mine.

  Why cannot youth be joyous, full of love?

  Why am I made the corpse that woes and fears

  And problems grim and world‑enigmas dire

       Should like a body wove

  |Close to my nature, in which is a fire

  The feverous source of lying pains and tears?|

[77^r]

Beginning – 2.

X Blow hard, thou wind; look pale, thou awful day!

  Ye cannot in your dread and horror match

  The thing that I bear in me and is me,

       These idle thoughts that stray

  Subordinate to the deep agony

  Of him who hears the gate of reason's latch

  Fall with a sound of termination,

  As of a thing locked past and for e'er done.

Alexander Search.

March 1905.

[1] vile ^/pale\

[2] X (The mansion’s form on thunder-hustings shake) ^{/Before the thunder shall the mansion shake\}

X A blankly‑smiling day informs our ^{/the\ /my\} eyne,

[3] the ^/my\